Have you ever wondered why a library resource is not working or wanted to check if there is any upcoming system maintenance? You can now quickly do so, by checking our Current status of library services and resources page!
We knew that having a centralised place to check would make your life easier, so we worked hard to produce a tool that would clearly show you the status of Library Services’ core systems and services. So now, in one place, we are able to highlight to you known issues and periods of service disruption, and provide you with information on alternatives where necessary.
On that page you will be able to check the status of our online resources, services and spaces. Specific major issues are highlighted at the top, but you can click on each category to get more details on what is happening (an alert shows next to a category when there is an issue related to it), and learn about other potential issues:
In Online resources are listed current issues with library resources and news items about upcoming maintenance, as well as workarounds for known issues. If you have found an issue with a resource, this page may tell you why. If not, you can report the issue to e-access@city.ac.uk
By checking the status of our Services, you will know if any of them is disrupted – did you know that all but one are available at the moment?
Currently all our physical Spaces are closed, of course, but this will be a useful page to remember checking when we reopen.
The buildings might be closed but CityLibrary is most definitely open. Whatever help you need accessing and using Library resources and services, there are lots of ways you can get it, including:
Online Chat
We have extended our Online Chat service so you can now speak to a member of Library staff online from 9am to 5pm during weekdays. You can find the Online Chat box via the Library homepage.
Ask Us
When Online Chat isn’t available, you can still ask questions and find answers using our Ask Us service. If you can’t find an answer to your question straight away, simply submit a new question and we’ll get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.
Find advice, guidance, tips and useful links via our Library Guides, including subject-specific pages for each School, and information on the types of services and resources available.
Library Services provides all current City students access to a huge range of e-books, on Westlaw, Lexis and other platforms.
What subjects are covered?
These titles cover a lot of different law topics: Company & Commercial, Crime, Employment, EU and International Law, Family, Land and Property, Litigation, Tort Law and many more.
We give you online access to texts such as “The White Book” and “Blackstones on Criminal Practice”, so you can always consult them even when all the library copies are being used.
Shipping books such as Snell’s Equity, Kennedy Rose on the Law of Salvage, and Scrutton on Charter parties are also available online, so you don’t have to wait to get your hands on them!
We also subscribe to many of the Butterworths’ handbooks and practitioner textbooks such as Banks on Sentence or McDonald on Immigration. This means you don’t have to come to the library to access them, they are all available from your computer and you can access it from anywhere.
If you’re already writing your dissertation, you’ll be happy to know that the library is in a great position to support you as a lot of content is accessible remotely.
How do I get a list of all the available books?
Does this sound interesting but you’re unsure which books are in the collection? Come to the Library Help Desk and we’ll show you how to view the full list on Westlaw and LexisLibrary, or send us an email to lawlibrary@city.ac.uk if you cannot find what you’re looking for. We’ve also provided some brief instructions below.
Westlaw – start by searching “Westlaw” in our catalogue (libraryservices.city.ac.uk) and log in using your City username and password.
Select the drop-down menu next to the ‘Westlaw’ logo and select “Books”: you can see all the titles included in our subscription. If you wish, you can also filter the titles by subject area, from the section headed ‘filters’ on the left-hand side.
LexisLibrary – search “LexisLibrary” on our catalogue and log in. On the right-hand side of the screen, there is a section headed “My Bookshelf”. Scroll down and select the “View More” link to see all the titles you can read online.
When you open a book on Lexis, we recommend you open the “Table of Contents” on the left-hand side, as this will make it easier for you to browse the book. Do let us know if you have any issues reading a resource.
You can also use the ‘Search’ bar in both databases.
Need further help?
Please contact us at LawLibrary@city.ac.uk or come to the Help Desk if you cannot find a book or need further help!
Not a law student?
We have thousands of e-book titles covering the full range of subjects taught at City
We are upgrading our library systems overnight Monday 16th – Tuesday 17th December. As a result you may experience intermittent periods of downtime during which you will be unable to:
login to online resources
see book availability through CityLibrary Search
request items, or
login to your CityLibrary Account to renew items.
Please plan ahead to conduct research and manage your account ahead of this time.
City’s Library Services Team has been awarded the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Standard. The standard assesses a huge number of elements and criteria, including feedback from library users, to determine the highest quality service.
This is something we could not have achieved if it was not for the help of our wonderful customers, both students and staff, who assisted in talking with the CSE assessors and who help us run a successful service in different ways.
Social Media
Our assessors picked up on several factors relating to our relationship with our students. Our social media game was praised as being beyond the standard and, without your interaction with our tweets and posts on CityLibrary News, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, these efforts would be wasted – so thank you so much for interacting with us online as well as in person.
Continous Improvement
We were also commended on our commitment to continuous improvement where, really, it is you who drive this, you who make us a success. Without your engagement with our Feedback pop-ups, for example, we would not know how we do better – because it is what You Say that We Do. We are currently looking at the feedback we received last month but you can let us know at any time what we are doing well and what are not doing well at our Help Desks where you can talk to our staff or fill out a form.
So thank you for making us a Customer Service Excellence success!
Understanding, organising and retaining information can be challenging. While studying and working we often need to compose and organise our written work, understand complex topics and retain information. Mindmapping can be an excellent tool to help us meet these challenges.
Depending on the task at hand mindmapping can be useful for almost everyone, but can be particularly useful for Neurodiverse profiles such as Dyslexic learners.
Mindmapping is a way of graphically representing a topic, concept or problem, so we can visualise it, making it easier to understand. Mindmapping is a versatile technique which can have many applications. Here are some examples:
Brainstorming
Mindmapping is a great way to brainstorm. You can use it to better capture your thoughts or start exploring a topic. You may find that it can help to stimulate and generate more ideas.
Capturing all of your ideas can reduce the load on your working memory. Once you can see your ideas together on one page, you can then edit and arrange them into a more organised structure. This is also useful for group brainstorms, try it on our large screens in the group study rooms and technobooths.
Planning and organising
Bring order to chaos. Before you start a task it’s a good idea to plan how you are going to do it. Mindmapping can help you plan written work such as an essay. With most digital mindmaps, as you build your map you can add more substantial notes to ideas. This means that when you export your finished mindmap into a Word document you have a logical outline structure and some content to get started with.
You could even use a mindmap to plan your research or literature search in an academic database, plotting out which keywords, synonyms and antonyms you are going to use.
A mindmap to plan a database search [click to expand].
Revision
Make your revision notes into a map. When trying to recall information it’s easier to remember the spatial layout of a map rather than linear notes. Add additional memory hooks, such as colour and images, which can prompt you to recall the associated concepts.
Breaking down complex ideas
Some topics are complicated such as land law, who is related to who in Wuthering Heights, or potential Brexit scenarios, requiring flow charts and maps to make visual sense. It’s difficult to keep all that information in your head or to understand the connections when going backwards and forwards though linear notes.
The characters of Wuthering Heights [click to expand].
So, how can I start mindmapping?
To me, Mindmapping has no strict rules, but there are some basic guiding principles you may wish to follow to keep your map effective:
Put your topic or essay title in the centre this is useful for keeping you on track or remind you to answer the question in hand.
Use single keywords (or very short phrases) so you can see at a glance what the map means when you come back to it. Key words are easier to digest and remember if you are using the map for revision. Keywords are also useful because at the mapping stage our ideas may not be fully formed sentences, but we can still easily capture and build on them.
Using MindGenius software
MindGenius 2019 software is now available on any City student Windows pc.
Staff can download the software onto their City staff desktop computer via the Software Centre. MindGenius is excellent for project management and has some advanced features to facilitate this, such as the ability to create a Gantt chart from your map at the click of a button.
MindGenius Functionality
The software is simple to use with “type and return” functionality to build you map. You can also:
Add attachments to keep the documents you are reading for a project or essay organised by linking them to relevant branches within the map.
Add notes: Add more substantial notes to each branch. As mentioned, this feature is excellent when planning an essay.
Export to Word: You can export your finished mind map to Word to create draft written work. In Word you will have a linear structure to work with along with your added notes.
Export to PowerPoint: You can use the software to help plan and create presentations.
The mental connection tool allows you to link ideas on different areas of you map and describe the relationship between them.
Categories and Filter: You can use colours to code or categorise ideas across your map. If your map becomes quite large and complex you can filter by category to concentrate on particular themes.
Templates such as the SWOT and PEST analysis can help encourage exploration of a topic and apply critical thinking to it.
If you’re really not sure where to start there are guided brainstorm tools, such as ‘solution finder’ and ‘question sets’.
A real life example
I find mindmapping incredibly useful for organising complex, but otherwise unordered ideas. To write this article I planned it first in Mind Genius.
I started by brainstorming in an unstructured way, getting every one of my ideas down on the page (which is very cathartic!). This reduced the load on my working memory. I also used the Who? What? Where? When? Question set to stimulate more ideas and identify gaps in my thinking.
Once all my ideas were on the page I could move on to organising and structuring the information using the drag and drop functionality to group ideas which came under the same theme.
Then I could think more critically and reject any of the weaker or less relevant ideas. i.e. in this article I’m not going to talk about other mindmapping software so I have deleted those branches on review.
Stage 1. An unordered mindmap. [Click to expand]
Stage 2. An ordered mindmap. [Click to expand]Stage 3. Mindmap exported to Word as outline text. [Click to expand]
Need Help?
If you need help or have any questions about Mind Genius contact us. We’d like to hear what you think so please add your comments below or share with fellow students how mind mapping works for you.
We are giving our bookings pages a new look and want your input.
Below are two screen shots for the design of the front page, have a look and let us know which you would find easier to use by clicking on the voting options below.
Option A: bookings by category
A: bookings by category
Option B: bookings by site
B: bookings by site
Printed versions of this survey will be available on noticeboards in Levels 2 and 3 of the Northampton Square Library, and at the Library Help Desks at the Cass and Law Libraries.
We will be asking for more feedback further along the design process.
Last night’s upgrade to our system prevented our email reminders from being sent out. Our suppliers are working to resolve this and we will send them out later today. In the mean time, you can log in to your Library Account to view the due dates of your items and renew them if necessary.
